Under the joint attack of the 2nd Panzer Division of the New United Kingdom and the 4th Panzer Cavalry Division of the Austro-Hungarian Wehrmacht, the southernmost link of the "chain of the Piave River", the city of Santo Dona on the Adriatic Sea to the south, fell before dawn, and the huge encirclement firmly locked the more than 500,000 Italian troops in the border fortified area. Please search to see the most complete! At this point, the 39 field infantry divisions, 6 heavy artillery divisions, 11 fortress divisions and a large number of border garrisons in the Italian army, the best equipped and most experienced of the Italian army, lost land contact with the rear, and west of the Piave River, the Italians did not have enough troops to protect Verona, Milan and other important towns, nor did they have a solid defensive line to prevent the enemy from penetrating deep into the Apennine Peninsula.

Early in the morning, the Italian **** Umberto, who stayed in Venice for two days because of his visit to the front line to inspect the ****, witnessed the coalition forces advancing by land and water, and launched an attack on this rich and world-famous "water city". His Royal Highness, who was originally in high spirits, had to retreat to Soleshino, a small city more than forty kilometers away, surrounded by personal guards, and the accompanying staff officers advised him to return to Rome, but the heir to the throne with the rank of field marshal clearly realized that his country was facing a terrible catastrophe, and at this very bad moment, someone had to stand up and turn the tide.

After more than an hour of communication and argument over the phone with the Chief of the General Staff of the Italian Army, Field Marshal Graziani, His Royal Highness Umberto, who often privately called himself the "modern-day Octavian", personally assumed the post of commander of the General Headquarters of the Northern Front and set up his headquarters in Soleshino.

On paper, the number of combat units on paper has reached 76 field divisions, 10 heavy artillery divisions, 3 armored divisions, 20 fortress divisions, and a considerable number of border garrison troops, with more than 1.4 million combat personnel, accounting for more than 60 percent of the total active strength of the Italian army, and excluding the nearly 600,000 troops trapped in the "chains of the Piave River" and those deployed on the northern and northwestern borders, there are less than 400,000 mobile troops that can really be deployed. In this area, there are only 9 main divisions on the front line, and they are mainly assembled into two forces: one is the armored battle group commanded by General Caballero, which has the 1st Armored Division, the 3rd Armored Cavalry Division and the 10th Rapid Infantry Division, which is currently engaged in an exchange of fire with the coalition forces northeast of Verona, intending to open a breakthrough in the "chain of the Piave River" of the coalition forces; The second is the Infantry Combat Group under the command of General Messer, which includes the 7th, 9th, and 16th Infantry Divisions and the 3rd Heavy Artillery Division, which had previously been deployed near Bologna and was being transferred to the front line on the Piave River by rail line.

In addition to this, the 2nd Panzer Cavalry Division was deployed in northern Italy, with the 14th Rapid Infantry Division, deployed near Brescia east of Milan, and the 14th Rapid Infantry Division, stationed in the northern town of Tenno, closer to the front line.

Before the arrival of the staff officers dispatched by the Italian General Staff, His Royal Highness Umberto made a plan for the next step of the battle with cigars and coffee, and issued instructions to the front-line departments in the name of the General Headquarters of the Northern Front.

The telegram was quickly delivered to Caballero and Messer, two veteran army generals, who were dumbfounded. Caballero's armoured battle group, arguably the most mobile of the Italian Army, quickly paid off with a counterattack, but as they were about to break through the Allied Airborne lines, reconnaissance units spotted Allied armoured units from Belluno across the river on the flank. The P38 and P43 tanks of the Italian army were used to deal with the Austro-Hungarian tanks, and in the face of the "Irish Tiger" and "Irish Leopard" of the new United Kingdom, it was simply a scum-like existence, Caballero quickly ordered his troops to switch from offensive to defensive, and at this time let them draw half of their troops to Venice, which not only meant giving up the blocking of the coalition assault arrows, but also giving up the road to Verona and even Milan.

The order he had received to the Venetian defenders was to complete the deployment and preparation of the attack within 24 hours, according to the standards of the exercise. Due to the loss of air supremacy, the intermittent railway line to Venice, and the backlog of troops and supplies at the stations along the line, it would take 72 hours to complete the mobilization and deployment of all four divisions even in the most optimistic scenario.

What is even more ironic is that when the 2nd Panzer Cavalry Division and the 14th Rapid Infantry Division received the order, they did not know where the General Headquarters of the Northern Front was, and they did not rush out until they received a clear reply from the General Staff of the Italian Army. However, upon arriving at the nearest railway station, they could only stare at the empty railway line: Italy's railway system was well developed, but it was seriously lacking in combat readiness design and strategic reserves. With the destruction of a large number of locomotives, passenger and freight cars, railway lines and railway control facilities in air raids, the railway system in northern Italy has become unable to function normally, resulting in a great impact on the movement of troops and the supply of supplies.

His Royal Highness Umberto and his staff, who are always the first to talk about strategy and tactics, did not fully assess the difficulties at hand, and they were still ambitiously planning a counterattack around Venice, the "city of water". In order to allow the Navy and Air Force to fully support this combat operation, Umberto **** personally talked to the commanders of the Navy and Air Force on the phone, and used his personal influence to urge the Air Force Command and the Navy Command to adjust the original combat deployment.

After the combat losses in the early stage, the Italian navy and air force were already seriously damaged. The Italian Air Force must not only maintain a certain number of troops in the Western Front, but also cooperate with the Navy to fight against the new United Kingdom naval fleet, but also deploy elite fighter wings in the Apennine Peninsula, especially in the capital area, to conduct air defense operations. The role of the Italian Navy in the war was to blockade the Adriatic Sea on the Eastern Front and block the enemy fleet on the Western Front, and their main fleet was not suitable or necessary to go deep into the Adriatic Sea to fight the Austro-Hungarian Navy. However, the Venice counterattack was personally handled by His Royal Highness ****, and the generals of the Italian Navy and Air Force could not disobey their will, and they were unwilling to fight their families, so they had to deal with things with some folds.

Umberto**** was able to become an Italian field marshal at a young age, not only because of his status as a prince. He graduated from the Royal Military Academy in Turin, has more than 20 years of military experience, and has participated in joint military exercises of the Central Powers as a commander many times, and is not an outsider in the field of military command. Under his general orders, the Italian troops stationed in Venice stubbornly resisted the allied offensive by relying on the buildings, bridges, and waterways of the city.

Due to the very special geographical environment of Venice City, after breaking through the outer defense line of the Italian army, the allied armored forces bypassed the main city of Venice and advanced westward, and the task of capturing the city was entrusted to the infantry units dominated by the 12th, 29th, and 33rd Infantry Divisions of the Austro-Hungarian Wehrmacht, and the Austro-Hungarian Navy also sent fleets and marines to support the combat operations of the land. Despite the strong offensive of the allied forces, the fierce fighting lasted from early morning to dusk, and they only occupied a small part of the main city of Venice, and each building conquered had to pay a considerable price.

By nightfall, the Allied armoured forces had captured the last Italian stronghold southwest of Venice, leaving the tens of thousands of Italian defenders in Venice "caged beasts". At the request of Umberto****, the Italian Navy sent five cruisers and nine destroyers from the port of Taranto to the north to support the Venetian defenders, and after nightfall assigned the lightning ships stationed in the ports of Grino, Garibaldi, Ravena and other ports to carry out night attacks on the Austro-Hungarian naval fleet blockading Venice. In the first battle, the Italian navy sank an Austro-Hungarian light cruiser and a destroyer at the cost of only three torpedo boats, forcing the Austro-Hungarian fleet to temporarily withdraw from the waters off the coast of Venice. In the middle of the night, the Italian Navy organized several ships to transport ammunition supplies and evacuate wounded civilians to the Venetian defenders, but on the way they were attacked by Austria-Hungary mine-struck ships, and three transport ships and one gunboat were sunk, causing hundreds of wounded army and civilians to drown.

In the second half of the night, the Italian support fleet was attacked by the Allied forces on the sea more than 150 kilometers away from Venice, and because the night bombing capacity of the Allied forces was underestimated, the Italians rushed to the battle, as a result, three of the five cruisers were damaged, and more than half of the nine destroyers were damaged, and the commander of the fleet, General Castagna, was unfortunately killed in the air raid. Shortly thereafter, as radar detected a number of enemy ships approaching from the north, Colonel Ferrari, who had taken over the command of the fleet, turned around and returned at full speed, despite the objections of the accompanying inspectors.

Thanks to the efforts of the logistics department of the Austro-Hungarian ** team, two 380 mm heavy mortar guns "Barbara" arrived at the Venetian front in the early morning of the next day, and these big guys with a range of 15 kilometers were able to fire 750 kg shells, and one high-explosive shell was enough to destroy a fortified four-story building. The loud roar of dozens of heavy guns, including the two Barbara, gave unprecedented encouragement to the allied soldiers preparing to attack, and at the same time pushed the Italian troops defending the city into the abyss of despair.

At the end of the shelling, which lasted more than two hours, the entire city of Venice fell silent. In order to uproot the firepower points desperately held by the Italian soldiers, the coalition forces transferred more than 200 anti-tank teams from various units on the front line overnight, and distributed nearly 1,000 anti-tank rocket launchers and more than 30,000 anti-tank rockets, two elite Austrian heavy infantry divisions and the 35th Infantry Division composed of Hungarians served as attack arrows, and the new United Kingdom also sent well-equipped marines, all of which were invested in one goal: to take the most important stronghold of the Italian army on the northern front, Venice!

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